Sydney Writers’ Festival: Alan Cumming, Not My Father’s Son

Alan Cumming was in conversation with David Marr at the Joan Sutherland Theatre to discuss his memoir Not My Father’s Son, as part of the Sydney Writers’ Festival on Wednesday May 22. In easy-going, jovial spirits at the Opera House, the multi-award winning actor, singer, author, director and self-described “Scottish elf” spoke at length about the events that led to the writing of his latest book.

Not My Father’s Son is divided between two separate timelines, then and now. The two narratives run in tandem describing the traumatic memories of Cumming’s childhood spent under the thrall of his abusive father, interspersed between a recount of “the craziest summer of his life” while filming the BBC television series Who Do You Think You Are? when family revelations and repressed emotions erupt back into his life. In too-crazy-to-be-true fashion, the book unfolds like a plot torn straight from a fictional drama, and Alan treats it as such when he speaks about it.

I read Not My Father’s Son last Christmas while I was travelling in the United Kingdom, coincidentally where most of the book’s events occur; there’s something very moving about reading a true life account and being in close proximity to the place where those events occurred. I found myself deeply appreciating the wry, subtle humour and shameless honesty of the writing. In person, Cumming brings these very same qualities to the stage as he describes the mixed feelings of blunt shock followed tentatively by relief when his father informed him, by proxy through his brother, that he was not his biological son.

Shame was a topic Cumming addressed at length, passionately stating that he believes there is no place for shame in any aspect of life: it should be cast off and banished into the ether. Cumming speaks with both charisma and conviction, inviting the audience into a discussion that at its core revolves around the impacts of domestic violence; a subject far too often marked as taboo, cast under the rug and hidden from sight, which only perpetuates the indelible damage caused by physical and emotional abuse.

The theme of the Sydney Writer’s Festival this year is “how to live” so it’s apt that one audience member asked whether it was intentional that Not My Father’s Son acts as a kind of instructional guide for those living with the effects of a similarly abusive situation. Cumming replied that it was not his intentional at all; his motivations were much more personal and, in his own words, very selfish. And yet, it is clear from the questions being asked of him that this book has opened up a debate about domestic abuse and trauma.

Unwittingly, Alan invites people to deal with a spectrum of emotions that are commonly suppressed, by creating a space in which abuse can be discussed openly, honestly and without shame; and in itself, that may very well be the answer to the question of how to live.